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A New App Lets Your Friends Virtually Walk You Home at Night

We all love a fun night out, but at the end of the evening, who walks whom home? You could always cab it, but maybe you only live just around the corner. Well, now you can have peace of mind when walking alone at night, or day, thanks to the new Companion app. This free personal-safety app allows your friends or family members to virtually keep you company as you walk. They can even track your journey on an online map via GPS. When a user sends out a request to his or her phone contacts, they will receive an SMS with a hyperlink to an interactive map that shows where the walker is. And if anything happens along the way, the intuitive app will "detect any changes in movement and ask the user if they're OK." Then you have 15 seconds to respond and confirm you're all right; otherwise your phone turns into a personal alarm system and will start making loud noises to scare away the cause of offence. While the app was created by five students at the University of Michigan to aid students walking home at night across campuses, tens of thousands of people around the world have also downloaded and started using it.